Month: March 2017

Surgery can be a scary prospect. Whether you are scheduled for minor skin cancer surgery or a triple bypass on your heart, allowing yourself to go under the knife can produce understandable anxiety.

One fact that may help calm your nerves is that if you schedule your surgery in the morning, you will be at a lower risk for surgical errors than you would be if you scheduled your surgery for the afternoon, according to Duke University researchers.

There are two fundamental reasons why afternoon surgical patients are at a higher risk for surgical errors. The first is that mid-afternoon is when most surgical teams experience a shift change. As a result, your team could even change mid-surgery. Most shifts in surgical wards begin at 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. When factoring in a standard work day with a standard lunch break, mid to late afternoon surgeries are often affected by this shift.

In addition, a biological factor plays into patient safety during afternoon surgery. Between roughly 3:00 and 5:00 p.m. the human body experiences a natural dip in circadian rhythms. These rhythms affect our brain wave activity as well as our alertness. For many people, this dip results in a normal feeling of sleepiness. This circadian dip does not benefit patients being treated by sleepy doctors.

Duke researchers determined that patients are most at risk when they schedule surgeries to begin between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. However, the safest bet may be to schedule your surgery on a day when it can be performed first thing in the morning.

An area along toll road 241 has been the site of three car accidents on the same rainy Saturday in Orange County. California Highway Patrol officers responded to the scene of the first accident around 1:30 p.m on November 20th. The accident involved a white truck that skidded off the road and struck a utility pole. Only minutes after this incident occurred, three more cars were involved in a second wreck along the wet road. The cars involved slid off the highway during a collision between them. Although there were injuries in both wrecks, no one was taken to the hospital. A third wreck was caused when a car lost control and rear-ended a California Highway Patrol vehicle at the scene. No injuries were reported in that crash but traverse city personal injury lawyers have been retained.

While a quarter of Saturday’s wrecks remarkably occurred in the same location in Orange County, nine additional wrecks were also reported. California Highway Patrol officials say that rain was a factor in these accidents. A connector to the northbound 405 freeway was closed due to a serious accident on the westbound 22 freeway that rendered the roadway unsafe. This information was obtained from a SigAlert issued by police. Southbound on the 405 freeway, two cars were involved in a crash in which one vehicle ended up off the road and another was seen to be facing in the wrong direction. The crash occurred near the Westminster Ave off-ramp around 9 a.m. Around the same time, another car struck a pole on the northbound 55 freeway. The pole’s light was knocked out, but the pole itself was still standing after the crash. On the northbound 5 freeway south of Jamboree multiple lanes were blocked due to a two-car crash near the center freeway divider.

Ambulances responded to two car accidents in Orange County on Saturday. One of the accidents occurred on the East Seventh Street on-ramp to the 605 freeway and another occurred on the eastbound 91 freeway. A car and a van collided and were blocking the fast lane on eastbound 91.

At 9:30 a.m. a black Mitsubishi may have hit the center divider on southbound 405. A tan Cadillac did strike the center divider on the Knott Avenue on-ramp to the eastbound freeway 91. California Highway Patrol responded to all accidents.